


Run

by TearoomSaloon



Series: Girl in the Mask, Boy in the Sand [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, Dark Rey, F/M, Hurt, Kinda, Role Reversal, you're going to suffer but you're going to be happy about it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-14
Updated: 2016-04-14
Packaged: 2018-06-02 04:42:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6551470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TearoomSaloon/pseuds/TearoomSaloon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She needs to get away from him. He burns, gods, he burns her skin. She, master of darkness, powerful girl, monstrous girl, is burned by the touch of some scavenger boy.</p><p>So she runs. It's all she can do to not drown.</p><p>But she wants to drown, if it means...oh, she won't admit to that, not yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Run

**Author's Note:**

> This is a full role reversal, with Rey as the Solo child fallen to Snoke and Ben a mystery from Jakku. 
> 
> Whole thing was written to "Human" by Daughter if you're curious.

It starts with running, the pounding of feet. Boots—hard and quaking—clicking loud on the metal, sinking into the forest dirt, sloshing across the riverbed. Running, always running. Away, towards, it’s hard to tell anymore. Always chasing, always on a hunt for something—shelter, anger, fear, him.

Oh, him.

She rounds the cliff face, chest on fire, mouth dry, eyes wilder than the most ferocious beast. She’s determined to find _him_. Him, him, the scavenger boy. The one who branded her, slit her face, was merciless in not casting the final blow. Not ending her pitiful, weakened existence.

And so she runs, is always running.

“Kyra—” one of her knights starts.

“No. Not here. Not now.”

She is nothing if not stuck in a tunnel vision, tumbling and twisting down the narrowest of rabbit holes. What lay at the bottom, she could only glimpse at in the most feverish of nightmares.

“Rey,” calls a voice.

She can’t ever stop herself from whipping towards that voice in the deepening pit of self-hatred. In her nightmares, her knees pick up, heels hitting the ground, shins worn and aching with the pain of each stride. She can’t breathe. She can’t reach him.

His fingers—the light, her father, and her past, everyone who ever held a hand to pick her up, the hands she bit—are just out of reach.

In the darkest of nights, she wipes her tears with the back of her hand, unable to make a sound. She hates herself for this, for crying, for feeling, for this _compassion_.

 _You have compassion for him_ spit her Master. She denied it but he could see beyond her thin veil. He could see the raw, shrunken mass of her heart, how a part of it still bled. _Not for him_ , she reminds herself, _never for him_.

She can have no compassion for the boy who scraped her mind like she did her knees when she was six and fell into a rock quarry. She can have no feelings for someone who made her feel like a lost child once more. It was a vulnerability she needed not.

 So she runs.

Runs hard, runs fast, runs away from the demons that will outpace her soon, the angels that will overtake her monstrosity. Their light should heal, but it burns her skin, burns her deep.

She looks into her reflection on the surface of a pool; stares down at the thick burn slicing her visage in two. It continues down under her robes, across her collarbone and gnawing raggedly into her shoulder. She sees his face there, too, his eyes bright where hers are almost black. She glances up.

“Why do you hunt me?”

“You’re the one running after me,” he says slowly, as though his tongue isn’t obeying his brain. “How can the fawn hunt the fox?”

She laughs and the sound is metallic, hollow, even with her voice exposed. “If you are a fawn, I am the grass.”

His eyebrows pick up into his glossy bangs. “All encompassing and essential?”

“Forever your prey. Don’t follow where you don’t belong.”

And she takes off again, hiding in the dark woods, waiting for his presence to disappear from the surrounding area before she can retreat. He is a perpetual entity across their bond—perhaps one day he will vanish from her thoughts, will stop rummaging through her emotions. She longs for that day only a little, the fear of his absence laying a heavier weight across her mind.

But he doesn’t vanish, no, he does not heed her warning, instead he follows her down into the darkness, their path lit only by the blue lights of bioluminescent plants and foxfire. It’s harder to run here, the path covered in tangled, gnarled roots. She’ll trip if she’s not careful, and there’s nothing anchoring her to reality this time.

“Where are you going?” he asks when she’s caught between him and a dead end, a river rushing too quickly to pass, too wide to leap.

“Away from you.”

“Didn’t you want to teach me once upon a time?” he mocks.

Yes, once upon a time. In a fairytale, long ago. “Life is a stream; it carves new paths, it always flows forward.”

“And that means?”

She gives him a shrug. “Don’t look back.” And she disappears into the dark waters ahead.

 

* * *

 

 

He finds her again months later, her wrists dripping with blood. It’s not hers. She wipes her nose on her sleeve—the blood there is hers, as is the red trickle from her split lip. One eye is bruised violet and yellow.

“Where’s your mask?”

She lacks it, the huge dark visor that usually sits atop her head. She looks less ferocious without its fangs and great silver projections, less canine.

 _Someone called me a bitch_ , she told him in a dream when he asked, _so I decided to howl like a wolf._

It’s strange to see her bleed.

Her eyes narrow. “What do you want, Scavenger? Come to watch me fall?”

“Shouldn’t you want to capture me?”

Her laugh is a bark. “You think I weigh that much importance on your shoulders?”

“I’ve seen the color of your eyes.”

She growls, first, and then she flees.

He knows no one has seen those eyes in years. He’s seen them in the dreams, the glistening hazel hidden behind cracking coal. He’s seen them glitter in the starlight, when she reaches up to hold him close. When she weeps into the crook of his neck, her bones aching to let go. He knows the girl her parents lost in fire and rain.

“Where are you in the waking world?” he asks her one nightmare, knowing the dream she sees does not mirror his own.

“I don’t know.” Her voice cracks. “I don’t know much of who I am anymore. Do you ask after me, or after _her?_ My shell?” A beat, a pause, and she rounds, pacing across the room. “Which one of us is the shell, even?”

“You’re not a shell.”

“You’re right. Monsters don’t have shells, only their teeth, their beastly skin.” The vision of her in white shifts to darkness and her wings break through her back, skin bleeding in the foggy light. She is no angel. “How do you do it, Scavenger?” she asks, picking at her feathers. “How do you walk the line between shadow and light?”

“I don’t hide.”

“That’s all?”

“I don’t hide what I want, who I am.”

“I’m not hiding—I just don’t know.”

• • • 

He goes after her again, when he wakes from the dream. He knows where she is—who she is—and his feet are quicker than hers could ever hope to be. He couldn’t explain her draw if someone asked, wouldn’t be able to say why he was so drawn to her. Magnets, maybe, opposites honing in on each other in the night. He needs to touch her, to feel her skin under his rough hands. The dark wolf with blood in her maw, white fur matted red.

She is sitting on the high steps of an ancient temple, helmet lying discarded at the base. He knows it’s her—the hunch of her shoulders, the grey of her aura, the loneliness that dulls only slightly when she recognizes his presence. He hasn’t felt that before, the change to feeling comforted by his intrusion into her self-imposed isolation.

“Why do you hide from me?” He stands before her, a few steps down, so his face is level with the tear-streaked planes of her face.

“Why would I put a feral creature purposefully in front of you?” She doesn’t swipe at the moisture in her eyes, not this time.

“Who says you’re feral?”

“I do. I felled my father with my own blade. What about that isn’t volatile, _vulnerable?_ ”

“Your unforgiveable actions are not your forgivable self.”

“If you can’t forgive, don’t forget. Know what I’ve done. Remind yourself every night when you take to your bed. Don’t be swayed by whatever you see in dreams.”

“It’s only ever you in my dreams.”

“There are two of me, you’ll have to be more specific.”

“I think there’s one.” He sits beside her, unsure of why he’s so comfortable next to her, near her—why he hasn’t felt repulsed in months. “There’s one frightened little girl who grew up too fast, who lost her parents in a way that wasn’t physical.”

“What do you know of loss, Scavenger? _Real_ loss, one you can remember like a thorn in your foot.”

“My family never came back.”

“At five, not twelve, not eight. They left you quickly, cut the cord with a snap. They didn’t slowly drift away when you needed them most, still there but not at all.”

“This isn’t a contest.”

“Existing is a contest, one only the strongest win.” She ducks her head, tucking it against her knees. “So why am I still here, if I’ve lost?”

He—he hesitates, but he lays an arm on her shoulder, the first contact they’ve had outside of sleep. And she unravels, coming apart under his touch when she twists to sob against his chest. Into him, gripping like he’s the only reason she’s not floating away.

“Who am I, Ben?” she asks into the leather of his coat. His name, it sounds strange to hear on her tongue, to hear spill from lips that only hissed _Scavenger_ at him for months and months.

“Something beautiful in an unpleasant way.” Her hair smells of wildflowers and smoke. “A distorted way. A girl on a crooked path crying out to be loved.”

“Why would I ask for something I can’t have?”

“I think you can. In time, you can have more than you imagine.” Look at where he’s come from, where he’s gone, what he’s become. The surrogate family he’s found, the softness that creeps into his chest when he sleeps.

The girl called Rey crying in his arms.

That’s who she is now, who she has to be. And he can grow to love her, if only she’ll stop crashing into him like the tide against the beach.

“Don’t think that,” says her weak voice, choked and hot. “Don’t think such things won’t be ripped from me. I can’t have that.”

“I want to give it to you, and that’s my choice to make.”

“Only to pull it from me once you know I’m caught in your trap.”

He moves her shoulders, moves her so he can see her cracking face. That burn is so angry, so red-purple and furious. “I’m not cruel like you. I don’t love to remove, only to give.”

“And who do you love, Scavenger? What girl have you left behind in your quest to right me, or whatever it is my mother’s sent you off to do?”

“I didn’t leave anyone. I’m always a step behind the one I’ll love. I’ve seen it in the Force, I’ve seen her face.”

“I bet she’s beautiful.”

“To me. To others she looks damaged, broken, but I know better.”

She chuckles hollowly. “Why are you so determined to convince me you’re right?”

“Because I am.”

 

* * *

 

“I need you.” Her voice quakes and she hates the sound. It’s disgusting, pitiful, and below her. But it emerges from her lungs, the shattered wings of a hopeless bird. “Ben, I’m scared.”

She’s got a long pike lodged in her chest.

It’s bleeding, angled down, and every breath is a vicious fight against burning, aching lungs.

His eyes are wide when he sees her, the horror never leaving, even after the shock rolls away. “You’re going to be okay.”

She doesn’t know if he says it for her sake or his own.

“You were right,” she wheezes, struggling with the breathlessness. “There was just one girl shrouded in fear. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t waste your energy, please. Hold still for me.”

She moves when he poses her, measuring, calculating which organs have been penetrated, how long until she goes septic, if she’ll last that long. His expression is grim and her stomach plummets. An appropriate end to a monster, speared through the chest.

“Stay conscious with me. We’ll get you out of here.”

There’s no hope in his voice.

It’s a long few minutes. He cuts the loose ends of the weapon away, as close as he can manage without injuring her further. Not that it mattered. Not that she was going to get out of this alive. If not her lungs, then at least one kidney was shot, maybe her intestines too, so many walls of muscle and soft tissue.

“Stay with me, Rey,” his voice pleads when her eyes begin to drift into the fuzziness. It’s more comfortable there—dark, quiet, painless. She wants to sleep, to disappear from this reality.

“Why should I? The beast is dead, rejoice.”

“No, not rejoice. There is no beast, just the girl. And I love her, I need her here with me, so stay with me, please.”

“Don’t love monsters, Ben the Scavenger.”

“You’re not.” His lips press to her forehead. “Not anymore. Stop saying that.”

She’s vaguely aware of being moved, transported elsewhere, away from this violent battlefield stained thickly with her blood. He doesn’t leave her side, his hands don’t stop crushing her fingers. He needs her there so badly he’s bruising her yellow and blue.

“I’m going to disappoint you,” she tells him, her throat weak.

“You’re everything I need—that’s far from disappointing.”

“That’s not what I mean. I lost, Ben.”

“No.” It’s a whisper, really. Dark, low, and crestfallen. “No, Rey. No. Please stay with me. I need you, don’t. Don’t leave.”

His face is pressed close to hers. She thinks she can feel tears, hot and painful, fall close to her cheeks. This is more affection than anyone has shown her since she was small. It stings.

“I’m sorry, Ben.”

“No.”

“I wish I’d gotten a chance…a chance to love you properly.”

“Don’t do this.”

“We’d have been perfect lovers, you and I. Broken, lonely, but together.”

“Oh, gods, please just—just hold on a little longer.”

“I can’t. I’m sorry. I loved you—I did.”

Her vision flutters, taking in his face—all its lines, its moles, its quirks—before growing dim, his voice disappearing as though through water.

 

 

 

 

 

• • • 

“This boy has been sitting beside you for eight straight days.”

It’s her mother’s voice. Leia. Stern, tired, relieved.

Her side is nothing but bandages and bacta. Three fractured ribs, punctured organs, contusions abound. Her head isn’t on straight—her _mother_ stands above her, like a hawk exhausted by her fledgling.

"Boy.”

Ben.

His head lays near her side, his chair pulled up as closely as manageable.

“I’m a monster.”

“All children are monsters and you’re my daughter. Wake him; he didn’t think you’d make it. None of us did.”

“Aren’t you going to imprison me?”

Her mother looks her over, regards her injuries, her temper, her possibilities for escape. She raises an eyebrow. “Not yet.” And she leaves.

She cards her fingers through Ben’s hair—an action she’s wanted, gods, she’s wanted for what feels like years. Centuries. It’s soft, unbearably soft, and she wants to bury her face in his downy locks.

“Hey."

He rouses, but not fully.

Oh, sweet boy, what would she do with him?

“Ben, I’m here. Hey.”

He looks up, his eyes seeing, drinking her in. Breath gets lost in his throat. He swallows, but it’s dry like his tongue. “I thought I lost you.”

“You lost the shell, here is the girl.”

She opens her arms and he sinks into her good side, letting her stroke his back, his cheeks, his hair. “Stop running from me,” he pleads into her scarred body. “No more chasing. Stay.”

“I’ll stay if you’ll have me.”

“I’ll have you only if you’ll love me.”

“You’re cheating—you already know I do.”

“Maybe we’re both cheating.”

“We must be, because I lost but I’m alive.”

He raises his head to look upon her, to see this new girl taking the place of the monster in black. “I’m so…don’t leave me again.”

“I won’t,” she soothes, kissing his brow. “I promise I won’t.”


End file.
